The explosive growth and development of the integrated circuit market over the last few years have been mostly limited to the digital VLSI domain. The difficulty of automating the design process in the analog domain, the fact that a general analog design methodology remained undefined, and the poor performance of earlier tools have left the analog world with few, if any, options for automated VLSI design.

Analog VLSI Design Automation may well mark the dawn of a new era. It describes a fully integrated, top-down approach to analog VLSI design automation and presents a methodology for each level of the design hierarchy. The authors define an analog VLSI design automation flow in which every tool has its predefined objectives and interfaces. They present working examples for each tool, and demonstrate the validity of their approach by running their design automation system from the top to the bottom levels in three different case studies.

Technologies like systems-on-a-chip (SOCs) have created a pressing need for automated design tools capable of handling analog circuit blocks. The ideas presented in this book are fully adaptable to various design classes. Using these ideas, you will be able to develop new methodologies and algorithms that will significantly reduce design costs and time to market for many practical systems.